


Achromantic

by honebami



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Aromantic, Gen, aro angie + aro agender amami, soulmate au ( sort of ! )
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 04:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honebami/pseuds/honebami
Summary: Angie paints the sea.





	Achromantic

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to my friend vito ! thank you very much for reading !!  
> this follows [agape](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10893267) !

Cobalt blue, indigo blue, cerulean blue. Angie craned her neck to the rainbow of shades that loomed over her, hooked and hanging like teeth. Royal purple, lilac purple, mauve purple.

She lifted the bottles clutched in her hands against the rows of paint. Sky blue, pansy purple; the child's craft paint smiled with illustrations of their inks. The sky was a blue of light value, a blue that breathed and whipped with wind. Pansies peppered the garden beds, and a pansy purple was the cheerful pride of pushing through earth, a touch like leather in thin lips.

Too dark, too light, some just right; but the hues surely differed in ways someone like her couldn't understand. 

"Do you need some help, missy?"

Angie smiled at the shop attendant. "God would like you to match these paint colours!" She pressed the bottles into their hands.

The attendant looked down at the low-grade paints, then back to Angie. "How old are you?" They weren't meeting her eyes anymore. "N-Nevermind that. I'll get you your paints." With little more than a glance, the attendant snatched the paints that surely matched, thrust them into her hands, and left with sharp steps.

Angie only continued to smile. Angie is a vessel of God, after all, and God always smiles, is always happy, is always right.

"God blesses your shop!" she called to the owner as her only payment. He smiled and bowed as she left with sunlight under her steps.

What Angie needs is what God needs. Her mother had said so, not to Angie herself, but to shop owners and street vendors as she held Angie's small hand in her own. Angie is a vessel of God, so her happiness is God's happiness.

Angie slung her bag over her arm and pulled out a permanent marker. She scrawled 'sky blue' and 'pansy purple' over the fancy paint's abstract names. An adult wouldn't need such labels, nor an older child, but Angie wasn't quite so human as the others.

"New paint, new paint," she hummed as she balanced her bag on her knee. She held a garden within the bag's fabric walls, rock grey and sun yellow and bark brown, cloud white and poppy red and sapphire blue. She nestled her newly-labelled sky blue paint next to it. "Blue paint, blue paint!"

She was going to the ocean to paint today, and the ocean was blue. Blue was water and white-dashed sky, blue was the colour of her eyes. 

She'd gazed as a child into blue puddles, seeking out her blue eyes. "You're not human," mouthed the figure under the glassy surface. The reflection waved back when Angie did, so she was friendly, really. But she'd never had much luck with water.

Angie flopped down onto the grass and pulled off her shoes. The last time she'd gone to the sea, she'd been pulled in and under, been snapped and scorned. She wriggled her toes through the blades before tucking her shoes into her bag and rocking back onto her feet.

The dirt path up the ocean cliff warmed her feet with a crumbling touch as she made her way up. She sang a song of made-up words, about God and watercolours, maybe.

Her mother forbade her from going to the sea alone, but God's will was absolute. Today Angie was God's body, and God was painting the sea.

The night Angie had nearly drowned, she had snuck through her bedroom window and up this same cliff, to see the ocean that didn't want her. Steel-wool clouds curled under her steps and her eyes burned as the shore roared in her skin. Away from her mother, away from God, away from the mouth of the sea, she screamed. She screamed out over the ocean, spat mucus over the earth. With a choking sob, she fell. A fissure ripped the sky as her knees hit the ground. The rain spattered like hail. Thunder clapped its hands over her mouth. 

She opened her eyes to the screaming sea, pushed herself up on her dirt-stained hands, and ran. Down the dirt path, down past the grass and the village shop, down to her bedroom window. Her mother was waiting with ice-glassed eyes. Rotten child she was, to scream or to cry, to call God's tears in her name.

But today, as Angie reached the clifftop, she stretched her arms high and smiled the sun and calm skies into bloom. She was safe today.

"Bless the skies, bless the seas, bless the sunflowers and their seeds," she sang as she kneeled, pulled out her canvas, and spilled her garden of nature's colours. "Sing for the flowers, sing for the trees. Sing for God, down on your knees."

She sat herself down on a rock and clasped the canvas in her lap. God was coming to paint. God's voice would sound soon.

"Oh, are you from here?"

Angie lifted her head to the source of the voice that certainly wasn't God's. A tall person with grass-tuft hair and a backpack over their broad shoulders looked back at her with an easy smile.

"Hamha!" Angie set down her canvas and ran to greet them, dropping a few paint tubes as she went. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. "Are you a visitor? Angie doesn't recognize you."

They laughed lightly. "Yeah. I'm just exploring, really. My name's Rantarou Amami." They glanced out to the sea. "It's a beautiful view up here. You painting?"

"God is the one who paints. Angie is only a vessel for God." She clasped her hands together.

"Is that so?" said Rantarou. "Put in a good word for me, then." They crouched down and picked up a paint tube. "Can't let God's paint get away from you. Sea blue, huh?" They looked at it for a moment longer before handing it back to Angie. The tube was warm in her hand. "Can I see the rest of your paints?"

"Huh? Hmm... Sure, God says it's okay!" She stooped and picked up the other paints that had fallen before grabbing her painter's bag and handing it to Rantarou. 

Their smile was tense. They turned the paints over in their hands, and one by one, mouthed their names. "Thanks." They handed the bag back to her and crossed their arms. "Not to be blunt, but... You can't see colour, can you?"

Angie held her smile. "Angie knows what colours are." Her fingers dug into the cotton. "They are God's colours."

Rantarou sighed. "The names you relabelled these paints with are all objects. Sea, sky, grass, pansies." They shifted and put their hands on their hips. "Why would you do that, if you could see the colours?"

The paint hung heavy through the pull of fabric. Her garden blurred. "Well, Angie," she took a breath, "Angie can't see the colours, because Angie can't see who she loves." She took a soft step and set her bag down. "Because Angie's soulmate is God." She turned back to Rantarou and pressed her hands together. "And man cannot look at God."

Rantarou gazed back at her, their eyebrows furrowed. "Are you aromantic?"

Angie titled her head to the side. Her pigtails spilled over her shoulders. "A romantic?"

Rantarou chuckled. "Sorry, it's a bit direct to just ask like that, huh? It means you can't fall in love." They looked out over the sea. "That's what I am, anyway. So I can't see colour either. Rather than not being able to see a soulmate of some sort, I simply can't feel that way in the first place."

Angie followed Rantarou's gaze. White glimmered over the waves that smacked against the shore. The tones gradiated, the shades breathed. "God is Angie's soulmate." She pressed her hands into each other. "Angie has known her whole life."

"Okay, sorry, sorry." Rantarou ruffled their hair. "Well, just know there's nothing wrong with not being able to see colours. It's no big deal, really."

Angie clasped her hands and nodded. "That's right. When Angie dies, she'll see them. Right now, her body is God's."

"Hey, that's not what I meant." Rantarou crossed their arms and faced Angie. "I don't know about your God, but the things you see, the art you can make, that's what counts now. You gotta make the most of what you have."

Angie's smile tightened as she stared back at Rantarou. Her eyes glazed through them.

Rantarou took a step back. "Did I say too much? I guess it seems pretty rude for a complete stranger to be telling you how to feel. I don't meet people like me often, so I guess I got a little intense." They held the strap of their backpack. "Nice meeting you, Angie. Hope you and God make a nice painting." They turned and began down the dirt path. 

"Rantarou, wait,” she called after them.

They looked over their shoulder. "Hm?"

"What are your colours?" She pulled her bag open. "Someone must have told you, right?"

Rantarou turned around. "Oh, yeah. Well, my little sisters call me avocado head, so I guess that's one,” they said.

Angie's eyes lit up. "Ah! Angie loves avocados!" She dug through her bag and pulled out a tube of light value. "Here it is. Avocado green. Go sit over there, okay?" She pointed to a rock near the edge of the sea cliff.

“Well, I guess I can’t say no,” said Rantarou. They sat with their legs splayed wide. "Divine orders, right?"

"Hm?" She looked up from her paints. "Ah, yes! Of course, God's requests are Angie's requests!"

"Wasn't it the other way around?" they asked.

Angie only hummed as she set her canvas once more. She squeezed out a palette of paint, dabbed her brush in avocado green, and let out an energetic wail as she made her first stroke. 

Rantarou sighed and smiled. They watched her paint. "You know, my sisters like to paint me too. Though usually they paint directly on me,” they said.

Angie grinned. "Angie likes to paint on people too!” She hopped over to where Rantarou sat, held their chin, and swirled a loose pattern of vines along their cheeks. “A living canvas is a powerful vessel,” she said as she pulled back.

Rantarou laughed. "That tickled. I doubt my sisters think about it as deeply as you do, but it must be fun, huh?"

"Fun?" she asked. Angie sat herself down once more and washed ocean blue waves over the canvas. "Painting is just what Angie does. Now, God needs to focus, so be quiet, okay?"

"Woah, scary. I gotcha."

The waves against the shore and the high tweets of skybirds nipped Angie's ears as she swirled Rantarou into her painted sea. With a triumphant splotch, Angie plunked her brush into her water-cup and held her hands together. "Thank you for this blessing of art."

Rantarou stretched their arms over their head. A sliver of belly peeked out from under their shirt. "We done?"

"Mmmm-Hmmm!" hummed Angie.

Rantarou stood next to her. "That's pretty good. This is supposed to be me, right?" They peered closer. "It's missing something, though."

Angie tilted her head to the side. "What? What do you mean?" She tilted in the opposite direction. "Tell Angie, tell Angie!"

Rantarou laughed. "Don't you think- ah, wait. Nevermind. Sorry, that was rude of me, huh?"

Her grip tightened around the canvas edge. Nothing missed from the art of God. No one critiqued the art of God. But God wanted to paint the sea, and look what she’d done; yet the sky was clear over her head. She waited another moment for rain that didn't hit. The canvas slid from her hands as she gazed for the clouds.

Something that was missing, from a painting Angie had made into her own. Someone that was missing. The sun beat into her. She lowered her head, reached for her bag, and pulled out her own colours one by one, colours her mother had guided her hands to as a little girl. 

Maybe this could be a painting not for her mother, not for Rantarou, not for God, but for Angie. She didn't hum or sing or smile as, in solid strokes of cloud white hair and a sun yellow coat, she began to paint a figure next to Rantarou. They held silent as she worked. Once more, as safe as before, the waves washed through her ears and the seagulls cried over her.

When she finished, Angie sat backwards, her expression blank. The figure she’d painted waved back at her. “You’re real,” Angie murmured to her reflection in the painting. Her mouth twitched upwards. She sighed, stood up, and held the canvas up to Rantarou. “How’s this?” she asked.

Within the shades born of Angie’s hands, the two of them smiled together in the canvas of their achromatic sea. 

Rantarou nodded. “Yup, now it’s perfect.”


End file.
